BOXER FROM THE BARRIO BATTLES OBSTACLES IN AND OUT OF RING

I’m back in two minutes to tell Araseli that I just saw the other woman and she was yawning, and that I don’t know if that’s a good or bad sign. However, Araseli’s not in a joking mood. I wish her luck, which is not to wish Lupita bad luck.

Later, following Johnny’s bout, Araseli and her opponent enter the ring. The women fight three two-minute rounds, one minute less than the men. These two strangers whale on each other like Frazier-Ali. After three windmill rounds, Araseli, with a fair-size mouse swelling over her eye, is judged the winner and does a little dance in the ring. She has her first victory, and a professional fighter is born.

•••

Johnny’s manager and trainer, Bernie Nevarez, is also his stepfather. Nevarez is a restaurant manager who, on the side, handles several fighters out of Rhino’s Boxing in Vista. He shows fatherly affection for his young fighter, but right now, he’s all trainer.

“This guy he’s fighting, Javier Barragan, he’s a tough Indian from Indio,” Nevarez says. “He’s had three fights, won two, but all three were knockouts in the first 50 seconds. He can punch, but how’s his endurance? I think Johnny can wear him down.”

Based on that, Nevarez formulates his strategy: Johnny is told to stay away from the guy for the first round, then, in the second, pick up the pace and use his presumed superior skills to wear the fellow down. That’s the plan, anyway.

I ask Nevarez how closely a trainer’s instructions are followed. “About 70 percent,” he says. Obviously, trying to avoid becoming separated from your senses is not the time to consult a checklist.

•••

Johnny spent his first few years in Brooklyn. He doesn’t remember his father, who skipped out when he was 2. His mother worked two jobs but still struggled, so she moved with Johnny and his little sister to North County to stay with an aunt.

There, living in the front yard of a tough part of Oceanside, he managed to be a mama’s boy, but in the muscular sense of the word. From age 5, he watched over his little sister, studied and palled around with the neighborhood guys but knew when to bow out and go home.

•••

The fighters are in the ring, dancing nervously. Johnny’s opponent doesn’t look Indian, but he does look tough. Nevarez hastily repeats his instructions, and then the bell rings.

Johnny promptly ignores those instructions and goes right at Barragan. His reward is a right hand that dumps him on his butt. He bounces up and, chastened, starts to box defensively. But he says later he learned one thing from the knockdown: “This guy can’t really hurt me.”

In round two, Johnny starts boxing and staying away, but gradually bores in, getting his punches in quicker and punishing the body. He ups the pressure in round three, banging away at the body like a kettle drum. “Kill the body and the head will die,” Joe Frazier counseled, and tonight Smokin’ Joe is a prophet.